maple syrup

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Sweet success: Tapping maple trees

Sap seeing ideal weather conditions

Updated: Wednesday, 20 Feb 2013, 7:06 PM EST
Published : Wednesday, 20 Feb 2013, 4:53 PM EST

BEAVERCREEK, Ohio (WDTN) -  

These buckets are the first step to a bottle of maple syrup.  About sixty sugar maple trees have been tapped at Beavercreek Narrows Nature Center and right now the weather is just about right. 
 
Ashlee Schmitt, Naturalist says, "In the evenings freezing but during the day it needs to be above freezing about 45 degrees with sunshine are prime conditions."
 
Right now a large amount of ice fills much of the silver buckets in the forest.  During prime conditions and some sunshine the sap flows from the trees.  But it takes a lot of buckets and a long process before the syrup is ready for the the table. 
 
The sap from a sugar maple has about 98 percent water so it takes about 40 gallons of sap to make one gallon of maple syrup.
 
Inside the sugar shack is where all the magic happens.  A large evaporation pan is heated by a wood burning stove.  The steam is the water evaporating leaving the sweet maple syrup behind.  
 
"We have just regular sap in here when we're ready to draw off we'll open this value here and the sap will push syrup over here and this is where we'll draw off at, "  says Schmitt.
 
Once the maple syrup is finished it is used for the Greene county parks and trails pancake breakfast on Saturday March 2nd.  The breakfast runs from 8:30 to 11:30am at Bellbrook Middle School.  Click here for more information.  

 

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